Goddess of Vengeance - Jackie Collins [56]
Staring at her reflection in the mirror she wondered if she looked any different.
Would anyone be able to tell that she’d finally done the deed?
No way.
‘But I can tell,’ she whispered to herself. ‘And it feels so right.’
Then Ace ruined everything by texting that he was driving into L.A. so that they could celebrate her birthday together.
Crap! She hadn’t told him about Vegas. And she certainly wasn’t planning on telling him about Billy. What was a girl supposed to do?
She quickly texted him back, hoping that he wasn’t already on the road. My mom wants me in Vegas, she tapped out, keeping it vague. Call you when I get back.
That should stop him. And when she did get back she would give him the news that it was over between them.
Sorry, Ace. Too bad. It was fun while it lasted.
Meanwhile, she had Billy on her mind. She couldn’t stop reliving their night together, their long conversations, the feel of his body next to hers. It was like some kind of awesome dream, a dream she never ever wanted to stop.
Billy Melina. Who would believe it?
* * *
‘Billy Melina. Who would believe it?’ the reporter said, as Billy slid into the booth beside her. The girl was in her late twenties, pretty in an aggressive way, with big boobs and an ultra-short skirt. She was on assignment from Rolling Stone, and she didn’t seem to care that he was three hours late for their sit-down interview.
Bambi, his personal publicist, cared. So did the studio publicist. So did the groomer – hired for the day to make sure Billy looked his best at all times. They all hovered anxiously by the table, until Billy waved them away and told them to come back in an hour.
The girl reporter, whose name was Melba, repeated her words.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Billy said, leaning back and ordering a Diet Coke. ‘Got hung up at the beach.’
‘Were you getting laid?’ Melba asked, licking her lips and giving him a flinty stare as if she knew everything about him, or was about to.
‘’Scuse me?’ Billy said, narrowing his blue eyes. This one was determined to be confrontational, and he didn’t like it. Dealing with female reporters could sometimes be dead tricky.
‘I always like to start an interview off with a bang,’ Melba said with a half-smirk.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, I like to get down early on. Move in real close to my subject. The closer the better.’
Was she propositioning him? Probably. Now that he was a big star all the girls did. And the guys too, because naturally gay rumours abounded – as they did with every other young male star. He wasn’t gay. Never tried it. Never had any desire to do so. Not that there was anything wrong with it.
Normally he might’ve contemplated taking this girl back to his house for the old blow-job by the pool routine. But after being with Max he wasn’t feeling it. There was something about Max that was incredibly fresh and appealing, and he’d begun to think that it might be nice to get to know her. But there was a big problem – she was Lucky and Lennie’s kid, and with the whole Venus divorce drama going on, dating Max was hardly about to fly.
He’d have to let her down easy; she was young and vulnerable, and seemed to like him a lot. He didn’t want to hurt her, so he decided that when she came to pick up Lucky’s Ferrari, he’d tell her he had another PR gig to go to and send her home.
‘What’s on your mind, Billy Melina?’ Melba asked, licking her lips yet again. ‘You’re not concentrating.’
‘What’s on yours?’ he countered. Sit-down interviews were not his strong suit, and he had a bad feeling about this one.
‘Your divorce,’ Melba said, anticipating a juicy reply. ‘How nasty will it get?’
‘Not on my part,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘I’m fine with it all.’
‘No gory details?’ Melba pressed. ‘Some salacious tidbit that nobody else knows?’
‘Sorry to disappoint – no.’
‘Shame. I would’ve thought being married to a controlling older woman would